The Change: Life

by J. C. Nichols

  "Typical guy," Ivy's mother shot from the other end of the room. Ivy's birth mother gave her a sharp, intense look.

  "She is your daughter, Gabriel. I have been with no other man – especially a human. You are my only. I was pregnant when you were... taken. With her. At the time I did not know."

  The large, menacing figure slowly reached up and took his helmet off of his head. His eyes were yellow, almost jaundice looking, and his face, as Ivy had seen before, was horribly disfigured, as if it had been melting and someone tried to move the pieces around to where they should more or less be. He leaned in to Ivy, examining her face.

  "...Mine?"

  Ivy’s birth mother exhaled. "Yes, Gabriel, yours. YOU are responsible for putting your daughter in the hands of these monsters!"

  He whipped his head to the side and looked at her. Ivy could see small blue sparks traveling over and in his armor.

  It was an unsettling effect.

  Suddenly her father turned and left the room.

  Ivy looked over at her birth mother. "Woman, talk."

  Ivy’s mother frowned. "Had I raised you, you would not be speaking to an adult – or anyone – in that manner of language."

  "Yeah, well, you didn't," Ivy’s mother shot from across the room.

  "I need to know. Please tell me about my father."

  Ivy's birth mother sighed. "There is not much to tell. When I crash landed on your Earth-"

  "Wait, what? You’re an alien?!" Ivy interrupted.

  Ivy's mother gave her a how could you be so stupid look and continued. "- it was right before the Trigger was pulled. I was revived by Gab – by your father – who had owned a mall that I had crashed near. It was late, and he was making sure everything was closed up properly when he saw my craft crash. He was smart, somehow figuring out how to open it from the outside – something you’re not supposed to be able to do – and found me unconscious, hurt, and naked. And perhaps it was that that prompted him to help me so quickly. He pulled me from the craft and nursed me back to health. It was during this time that we fell in love."

  "Wait, why did you even crash land to begin with?" Ivy asked her incredulously. "You don't know how to drive a spaceship?"

  "Do you?" Ivy’s birth mother snapped at her. "And that is such a ridiculous name, spaceship. Gabriel called it that too. But no, I cannot pilot one. I am a scientist, and have no need for such base skills. Before that day, I had never piloted one of our ships before."

  “You don't fight like no damn scientist,” Ivy's mother said from across the room.

  “I had to learn to survive.” Was all Ivy's birth mother said, not even looking her direction.

  "So... Okay, you, became pregnant with me?"

  "No. I became pregnant with your sister, whom your father had named Mia."

  Ivy looked at Jacob, her eyes wide. "Jacob, didn't you say..."

  "Yeah, but, Mia didn't have, you know, green skin or anything…"

  Ivy's birth mother frowned and glared in his direction. “Do not speak as if you knew my daughter! You did not! In truth, you only knew her for the briefest of moments, and did not know even the most base of facts about her! Did she tell you of her former love, for example? Or of the child that they had together? A child that is still alive??”

  Jacob blinked. “A-child? Mia had a child? With-” Jacob fought to remember the name of Mia's former boyfriend. “-Rio?”

  The frown on Ivy's birth mother's face softened. “Yes. They had a daughter. She left them both.”

  Ivy watched the conversation like it was a tennis match, looking back and forth to the speakers as they spoke, intensely interested.

  “But to go back to your comment,” She continued, “No, she did not have green skin. She took after her father in that regard. She ran away from us when she was about 8 years old. Before I knew that I was pregnant with Ivy."

  The room filled with a pregnant silence.

  "So, your first love was my sister," Ivy told Jacob with a hint of hostility in her voice. She then turned her attention back to her birth mother. "Why did she run away anyway?"

  "Because I told her that her father had died."

  "Of course you did. Why? Why did you lie to her?"

  "Your place is not to judge my actions, daughter. There is still much you do not know. It was better for her to believe this lie than to know the truth."

  "And what is this truth?"

  "Everything you think you know about the ones you love is a lie."

  Ivy looked wearily at her mother. "Like what? I'm the freak here – they're just people. Normal people."

  Ivy's birth mother chuckled. "If that was the case, little one, they would not be alive. The would not have survived the Triggering."

  Ivy's mouth suddenly grew dry. It was something that her mother – her real mother, not this woman who happened to have given birth to her – had often wondered aloud. Why did they survive when all the rest of humanity did not?

  "What the fuck do you mean?" Ivy's mother chimed in from across the room.

  "I'm... I'm hot. Is anyone else hot?" Ivy said in a slightly sluggish voice.

  Everyone turned to look at Ivy.

  "You don't look so good, Iv…" Jacob told her, examining her face carefully.

  Ivy laughed lightly as she tried to wipe the sweat that was beginning to accumulate on her face off onto her shoulder. "You can't be telling girls things like that, babe."

  "Sprout... are you OK?" Ivy's mother asked from across the room.

  "Mom... Yeah, you know, I don't feel so good..."

  The entire room shook violently. And continued shaking.

  "Where are we?!" Ivy's mother yelled at her birth mother.

  "The Unim'ariel. I guess you could call it something like a mothership."

  "A mothership?!? You mean we're in space?!"

  "Space? You humans have such strange words for things. We are in the collective, yes, because… no… it could not have happened already..."

  "What could not have happened? What are you talking about?" Ivy's mother practically spat.

  The shaking intensified.

  "The destruction of your planet."

  "Ivy?" Jacob’s small, fear-tinged voice caught everyone's attention. He was looking at Ivy, who had her head down and her hair concealing her face. She looked dead, being shaken like a rag doll while bound to the flat surface.

  She slowly looked up at Jacob, her hair cascading away from her face, revealing large, unblinking black eyes.

  “Oh shit.” Jacob murmured.

  "Are you doing this, child? Is this you?" Ivy’s birth mother yelled. "If it is, stop before-"

  The shaking gradually subsided.

  Moments later the doors to the room opened, and 3 tall gray skinned humanoids strolled in with all manner of equipment. Ivy’s birth mother began speaking at them in a rapid, alien tongue – which they largely ignored. Instead, they went to surround Ivy.

  Silently.

  The ship rocked again and the sound of an explosion was heard in the distance. The aliens appeared to be startled.

  The pressure in the room changed, and the aliens suddenly flew to the ceiling, hitting it hard, then the walls, then the floor, then the walls again, then the ceiling... over and over again, as if they were in a modern day dryer back on Earth. Ivy and the others could feel the rapidly changing atmosphere even though they were bound fast, could see the signs of it as their hair went this way and that, causing their vision to flicker.

  And then it ambled in – a large, grotesquely mutated human with various degrees of muscle development all over its body. It braced itself as it entered the room, slowly advancing on the bound trio.

  "You came." Ivy said in a distant, almost ethereal voice, her deep black eyes fixed solely on the mutated figure.

  It caused Ivy’s mother – the woman who raised her, who meant more to her than life itself – to look up and try to get a glimpse at who Ivy was
talking to.

  She involuntarily cried out.

  It was her father.

  - END -

  - 13 Years Later -

  It was one of my most vivid memories, and one of my earliest ones. It was almost as if it had somehow been hard-coded into my brain.

  I was a little girl, extremely small for my age, and barely entering puberty. I was sitting on my father’s lap playing with my 2 favorite – really, my only – toys while we rode the train. They were strange toys for a little girl to have: two small female figurines in what appeared to be skimpy, bathing-suit style battle armor, one in black and one in white. The armor didn't leave much to the imagination, but they were all I had, and I absolutely loved them.

  Now, I can't remember exactly where we were going, or why, but I remembered the general aura that my father was giving off: sadness. It seemed like he was always sad anymore, and I was pretty sure I knew why.

  But that is another story that I'm not quite ready to tell yet.

  I remember a lot of details about that train. It was dirty, for one, and abandoned, for two. We were the only ones on it, and I had a slight suspicion that we weren't exactly supposed to be. And it shook a lot. I kept wondering if it was going to fall off the track.

  My father had his arms around my waist and his head resting on top of my head, something he apparently found comforting. I kind of did too, though I had no idea why. Maybe it was just his closeness. I love that man dearly.

  I would occasionally look up and steal glances of his reflection in the opposite window. He looked so sad, so preoccupied, and it bothered me that I had no idea how to comfort him. I remember I finally decided to see what he was looking at, so I sat up and turned around to try and sneak a peek out the window, but he stopped me – he put his hands in front of my eyes and returned me to the position that I had been in. He didn't want me to see whatever it was that was outside that window, and though I strongly suspect now what it might have been, then I was frustrated and aggravated beyond all measure.

  I was so aggravated that I returned my attention back to my warrior-maidenish toys and began making them fight like they were true gladiators ripped from ancient times.

  My attention was taken from them immediately as the door to the car we were in opened and a young woman who couldn't have been long out of her teens entered.

  I drank in her appearance. She kind of reminded me of my toys: she as wearing short shorts (halfway unzipped), a bikini looking top, and something blue and metallic on the side of her head. The skin from her right arm was missing in places, revealing small robotic parts. She didn't say anything as she entered, didn't even look our way, really, but she looked pissed at something. Maybe everything.

  I was so startled by her overall appearance and demeanor that I accidentally snapped the head off of one of my figurines, which caused me to return my attention to them immediately. I remember the feeling I was feeling at that very moment vividly: hurt. They were the only toys that I had, that I had ever had, and my father went through a lot to get them for me. And my mother...

  I turned to my father, who was already looking down at me. I couldn’t help it, something inside me just gave, and I started crying.

  It had nothing to do with my toys.

  It had everything to do with my mother.

  My father frowned and hugged me tighter to him, and we both became lost in our embrace.

  And then I felt a tug on my shirt.

  I jumped and looked at whatever it was that tugged at me, only to find that it was the teen that had entered the car minutes earlier. She had picked up the head of my decapitated action figure and was gently prying its body from my hands. I let it go and let her have it, curious to see what she planned on doing with it.

  My curiosity was quenched in a matter of seconds.

  She fixed it.

  She then did something else that made me nearly jump out of my skin: she hugged me. Something only my mother and father had ever done.

  "Wanna hear part of a song I'm writing?" She asked me when she pulled away in a voice that did not match my initial impression of her at all. Her voice was melodic, light, and overly feminine. It was a pleasant sounding surprise.

  I looked up at my father. He smiled and shrugged. "I don't know, do you?"

  I looked back at the girl. "Yes. I would love that." I said... or something very similar. I remember she smiled and wiped the tears out of my eyes, then sat cross-legged in front of me, on the dirty floor.

  Her singing voice was... well, it was honestly amazing.

  Sometimes the world looks dark

  but only 'cause we close our eyes

  and sometimes life gets hard

  but it all goes away in time

  and the clouds will move away

  and the sun will shine again

  and the pain and sadness fade

  it's never if; it's always when

  I remember my mouth was hanging open at the end. I remember because when I realized that, I forcibly closed it. My mom used to sing, but nothing like that. This girl was amazing.

  "You're really good." I told her frankly. "My mother would have loved you. I wish I could sing like that."

  She smiled and looked up at my father. "Well, if you guys aren't doing anything maybe we can-"

  My father didn’t let her finish the sentence. "Honey, its time." He told me, looking away from the window. I sighed and braced myself as he stood up and picked me up in his one arm, then opened the door with the other.

  He stood there as I spider-monkeyed myself to him, gripping him for everything that I was worth.

  "Hey! What are you guys doing! It’s dangerous-"

  My father ignored her.

  He – we – jumped out.